Weather: A warm and sunny weekend ahead

Knife bins to be set up across three counties

Bins are going to be set up across Shropshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire on Monday, for people to surrender their knives.

West Mercia Police says it's aimed at reducing the amount of knife crime, but while the knives can be left anonymously, an investigation might be carried out if they are found to have been used in a crime.

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The knife bins will be found at the Kidderminster, Worcester, Redditch, Shrewsbury, Hereford and Telford police stations.

Weather: Light cloud overnight and a fine weekend ahead

We're forecast some light cloud overnight, but we could see some sunshine tomorrow and the forecast for the weekend is looking pretty good for September.

Weather forecast for the West Midlands

Posted at16:5912 Sep

Police forces look for 'amicable split'

The West Mercia and Warwickshire police forces say they're working out the terms of their "amicable and negotiated separation" after West Mercia decided to pull out of their "strategic alliance".

But the Warwickshire force is looking for its neighbours to meet the costs of the divorce and said: "The alliance agreement is clear that the party which terminates the agreement is liable to pay the other party’s reasonable costs."

BBC

Warwickshire Police said there was "considerable work to transition out of the current alliance arrangements".

And it said 80% of the services they had been sharing were currently based in the West Mercia force area and would have to be re-established in Warwickshire, which it said could take time.

Posted at14:5212 Sep

Farmer 'absolutely raving' to find people pooing in fields

BBC Shropshire

A Shropshire farmer says she's caught people pooing in her fields three times, and ordered one of them to clean up his mess.

Health body agrees to pay £4m for cross-border treatments

Shropshire health commissioners have agreed to pay £4m to their counterparts in north Wales, to settle an argument over cross-border treatment costs.

The disagreement started when the Betsi Cadwaladr health board increased the charges for treating patients from this side of the border.

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The Shropshire Clinical Commissioning Group had argued against the increase, but its chairman, Julian Povey, said it negotiated to pay the £4m and said it was like "shopping in a market".

Posted at11:0011 Sep

West Merica could get more than 300 extra officers

West Mercia Police could get up to 360 extra officers, as a result of greater government funding, the Police and Crime Commissioner has said.

John Campion said it was a very rough estimate, based on Chancellor Sajid Javid's spending pledge of £750m for 20,000 police officers for the UK.

West Mercia PCC

Mr Campion said the estimate of between 300 and 360 extra officers was based on current spending, but if the government gives priorities to other forces, he might have to fight for a "fairer share" of the money.

Last autumn, West Mercia Police announced it was recruiting an extra 100 officers and in February it confirmed it would hire another 115 on top of that.

All 215 of those recruits should have started work by December this year.

'Gangs exploiting reduced-hours pupils'

Schoolchildren who are given reduced timetables because of behaviour problems are at greater risk of being recruited by criminal gangs than those who are excluded from the classroom, West Mercia's deputy police and crime commissioner says.

At a meeting with the force, Tracey Onslow said gangs were likely to avoid those who were permanently excluded because they would be on "the radar" of local authorities.

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Ms Onslow suggested councils should do more to monitor children on part-time timetables and that the police needed to work closely with schools to engage with those students.